title: Deep sequencing discovery of novel and conserved microRNAs in wild type and a white-flesh mutant strawberry.
abstract: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that regulate gene expression by base pairing to mRNA target sequences, and play crucial roles in plant development and stress responses. The knowledge on post-transcriptional regulation by miRNAs in strawberry is rather limited so far. In order to understand the role of miRNA in the molecular control during strawberry fruit development, small RNA libraries were constructed from fruits at the turning stage of strawberry cultivar 'Sachinoka' and its white-flesh mutant by using the Solexa platform. One hundred and twenty conserved miRNAs belonging to 27 miRNA families and 33 putative novel strawberry miRNAs were identified in both libraries. Their target genes were predicted using the Fragaria vesca genome. Nine of all miRNAs showed significant expression differences between two types of samples. Four miRNAs were up-regulated and five were down-regulated in white-flesh mutant. The sequencing results were partially validated by quantitative RT-PCR. Among them, the expression of miR399a shows the biggest change between the two samples. The prediction of its target gene showed that miR399 may play an important role in phosphate homeostasis of strawberry fruits. Furthermore, we deduce that the expression of miR399 has negative correlation with the content of sugars.
authors.affiliation: College of Horticulture, Shenyang Agricultural University, Dongling Road 120, Shenyang, 110866, Liaoning, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: He
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Wenjuan
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Mao
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Hongyan
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Dai
authors.forename: Yuexue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Yue
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Zhihong
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D031985:Fragaria / Q000502:physiology*; D005638:Fruit / Q000502:physiology*; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000502:physiology*; D010858:Pigmentation; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs